Course Description
Humans have transformed the Earth so much so that some scientists, most notably the chemist and Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen, have called for the designation of a new epoch in the history of the planet, our epoch, the “age of humans,” the “Anthropocene.” This term expresses the assumption that recent human activity in the natural world has affected the Earth’s crust more significantly than volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and earthquakes. What is intriguing about this concept is the currency it has gained within a short time, in culture, politics, and across almost every academic discipline and sub-discipline. No other creature on this earth has been more successful in the competition for habitat and resources than humans, but we are now starting to realize that our success has come at a high price: vulnerability, global climate change, species extinction etc.
The Anthropocene is a concept in flux and therefore any approach to it will be exploratory. This class will discuss the value of the Anthropocene concept, assess what defines it and when it began. Some have dated its beginning to Hiroshima, some to the onset of industrialization, and a few to the agricultural revolution ca. 8000 years ago. The course will consider contemporary environmental issues from a long-term perspective, situate local, regional and environmental issues in a global context, and it will identify primary sources useful in answering a set of focused research questions.
Venice can be seen as an ‘Anthropocene City’ par excellence. Alongside slow natural sinking, human-induced climate change, the dramatic exploitation of water resources and fallout from industries, threaten to submerge the “Queen of the Adriatic” and its many iconic sites. The lagoon can be seen as an “organic machine” (a term once used by Richard White for the Colorado River).
A couple of field trips will be part of this seminar. The idea of field trips through Venice is based on a summer school titled Water-Culture-History that I convened in 2011. Students back then explored the Venetian hydropolis by visiting such places as the Arsenale, the Punto Laguna museum, the islands of Burano, Sant’Erasmo, San Francesco del Deserto and some small unoccupied islands of the salt marsh. I am hoping to approach geologists like Dontatella de Rita and water historians like David Gentilcore to accompany us on these explorations. Field trips will help in understanding the diversity of land usage within the lagoon, the deterioration of the islands due to erosion, and the technological and ecological solutions that have addressed specific challenges of the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene Campus 2021 produced a map of special places in Venice that reveal interesting ‘anthropocenic’ interrelations between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. This seminar will (re)visit some of these places and explore new places. The idea is to expand the original Anthropocene map and produce a student exhibition based on research and observation.

Themes

Humans on the Planet
What is the Anthropocene? And what is it good for?
The Anthropocene - Promises, Critiques, Pitfalls
Deep Time - The History of Humans and the History of the Earth
The Lagoon and Humans - Victims and “Divine Engineers”
The Birth of Venice
A Forest on the Sea - Timber, Empire, and the Venetian Republic
Seeing Like a State and Seeing for Yourself
Drinking Water in a Saltwater Sea
A Polluted World - a Polluted Lagoon
Extinction - Endangered Species and Venice as an Endangered City
Climate Change and Environmental Justice
Hope or Nope? “Venice is not sinking - ha!”

Learning Outcomes
By the end of the course, students will be able to discuss the concept of the Anthropocene, explain what defines it and how it has been dated. They will be able to critically assess the explanatory value of the Anthropocene within the broader field of the Environmental Humanities. They will moreover be able to think with the Anthropocene. They will pose questions that cannot be answered with the help of Wikipedia. Discussing the Anthropocene requires taking into account both micro and macro worlds, biology and physics, human and more-than-human worlds, the history of humankind and the history of the planet. Students will be able to talk intelligently about changes to the Earth’s environment, long-term trends and human-induced ruptures, about the Great Acceleration, the Seventh Extinction, and planetary boundaries. An understanding of the Anthropocene has two functions: it shows how we got to where we are today; and it shows how we might be able to deflect some of the worst impacts that humanity has on the globe.
Throughout the course students will be acquainted with theoretical perspectives from a variety of different disciplines. They will learn skills for analytical reading and discussion, and apply theoretical insights to their own research. They will learn to consider contemporary environmental issues from a long-term perspective, and to situate local issues in a global context.
Through their writing, curatorial and video assignments they will improve their skills in communicating ideas and arguments to their peers and a broader public.

Teaching and Evaluation

Students will learn about the Anthropocene through ‘documents of culture’ and ‘documents of nature’, through global analysis and local observation, through readings and field trips. Classroom discussion – in groups or in the plenary – will be central. Students will be required to formulate mini responses to the readings and write a short synthetic essay. They will also produce a media project (photo, video, or similar) and do background research on this.

Weekly Mini-Reponses and classroom discussion (40 % of grade)/ For each of the required class readings students will need to come up with two questions of clarification or curiosity. Full credit will be given to responses that are thoughtful and provocative; and to students who take an active part in the classroom discussion.

Final Synthetic Essay (20%)/ Students will write a short think piece that explains how the course as a whole has changed the way they think about Venice and the world in which we live. Alternatively, they can write a think piece that focuses on a more specific topic (like ‘Is there such a thing as a Good Anthropocene’?) and links it to some of the texts and observations of our class.

Creative Media Project (e.g. photo essay, 3-minute video, or creative text) (40%)/ This format gives students the opportunity to use different media and accompanying text. In order to document their research, they will need to write an accompanying text with a short research bibliography.

Preliminary Schedule, Readings and Assignments

The following is a preliminary schedule. Readings and assignments will be adjusted depending on the familiarity of students with the topics and their pre-knowledge. This means that we may drop some of the texts/ reduce the reading load and/ or add new texts depending on student interests. Dates of field trips will be added at a later point; typically, they will be scheduled for Fridays. Some of the assignments are listed in the syllabus. They may, however, change depending on where our classroom discussions lead us.
Students will be provided with a copy of Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio De Capitani, and Pietro Daniel Omodeo, eds., Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide, Venice: Wetland 2022-

Week 1
Introduction - Humans on the Planet

Carl Sauer, “The Agency of Man on the Earth”, in William L. Thomas, Jr. (ed.), Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, 49-69.
Helen Tiffin, “Human Overpopulation: The Elephant in the Greenhouse”, in Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review no. 5 (2023).
https://springs-rcc.org/human-overpopulation-the-elephant-in-the-greenhouse/
Sammi Li, “Sinking or Sailing: Venice's Overtourism Dilemma and the Search for Solutions”, in Foreign Affairs Review, published February 29, 2024.
https://www.foreignaffairsreview.com/home/sinking-or-sailing-venices-overtourism-dilemma-and-the-search-for-solutions

Week 2
What is the Anthropocene? And what is it good for?
Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, “The Anthropocene”, IGBT Newsletter 41 (2000): 17–18.
http://people.whitman.edu/~frierspr/Crutzen%20and%20Stoermer%202000%20Anthropocene%20essay.pdf
Socio-Economic Trends and Earth Systems Trends [Fig 1, Fig. 2, Fig. 3] in: Will Steffen, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney and Cornelia Ludwig, “The trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration”, in The Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019614564785
Jan Zalasiewicz, Julia Adeney Thomas, et al., “The meaning of the Anthropocene: why it matters even without a formal geological definition”, in Nature (August 2024): 980-984.
https://www.kth.se/polopoly_fs/1.1354285.1725267957!/Zalasiewicz%20et%20al.%202024_Nature%20supp-1.pdf

optional reading
Julia Adeney and Jan Zalasiewicz, Strata and Three Stories, Munich: Rachel Carson Center, 2020, 43-67.
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/2020_i3_hw_strata_stories.pdf
Watch: John McNeill, “Anthropocene”, KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KErSG_MT-0
The Anthropocene: The Age of Mankind - Documentary Film, 2017, Vpro Documentary, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW138ZTKioM]

Assignment: Send two images: one that shows the human agency on the earth (anywhere) and the second one that shows ‘anthropocenic’ agency in Venice

Week 3
The Anthropocene and Deep Time
Promises, Critiques, Pitfalls of the Anthropocene
Marco Armiero, Wasteocene: Stories from the Global Dump, New York/ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 1-15.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108920322
Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative”, The Anthropocene Review 1, no.1 (2014): 62-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019613516291
Sverker Sörlin, “The Mirror: Testing the Counter-Anthropocene”, in Gregg Mitman et al. (eds.), Future Remains, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 169-181.
Rob Nixon, “The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea”, in Future Remains, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, 1-18.
The History of Humans and the History of the Earth
Tomas Matza and Nicole Heller, "Anthropocene in a Jar", in Gregg Mitman, Marco Armiero and Robert Emmett (eds.), Future Remains: A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, 21-28.
https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226508825-004
Franklin Ginn, Michelle Bastian, David Farrier, and Jeremy Kidwell, “Unexpected Encounters with Deep Time”, in Environmental Humanities, 10 (2018): 213-225.
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/213ginn.pdf

Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Sebastiano Trevisani, “The Critical Environment of the Venice Lagoon. A Fuzzy Anthropocene Boundary”, in:Anthropocene Curriculum Apr 22, 2022. https://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org/anthropogenic-markers/critical-environments/contribution/the-critical-environment-of-the-venice-lagoon

Assignment: Find Traces of Deep Time in Venice! What was there before humans arrived in the lagoon? Or write a mini text about Deep Time in Venice

Week 4
The Lagoon
Monica Porzionato, “Assemblages in the Venetian Lagoon: Humans, water and multiple historical flows”, in Shima 1 (2021): 121-136.
https://www.shimajournal.org/issues/v15n1/09.-Porzionato-Shima-v15n1.pdf

Francesco Luzzini, “’The Floating Price of Beauty’: Water and Land Management in Venice through the Centuries”, in Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio De Capitani and Pietro D. Omodeo (eds.), Venice and the Anthropocene, Venice: Wetlands, 2022, 29-32.

Aldino Bondesan and Paola Furlanet, “Artificial fluvial diversions in the mainland of the Lagoon of Venice during the 16th and 17th centuries inferred by historical cartography analysis”, in Géomorphologie Relief Processus Environnement (November 2012): 175-200 [read the abstract and introduction and check out the maps in Fig.3, page 186].
https://doi.org/10.4000/geomorphologie.9815

Rita Vianello, “The MOSE Machine: An anthropological approach to the building of a flood safeguard project in the Venetian Lagoon”, in Shima 15, no.1 (2021): 94-120.
https://iris.unive.it/retrieve/e4239dde-3508-7180-e053-3705fe0a3322/08.-Vianello-Shima-v15n1.pdf

Week 6
The Birth of Venice
Diego Calaon, “The birth of Venice: water, timber and manpower: Reinterpreting the origins of the lagoon city without history books, or almost”, in Ligabue Magazine (2017): [156-/] 172-185.
https://iris.unive.it/retrieve/e4239ddd-2e6e-7180-e053-3705fe0a3322/2017_LM70_Calaon.pdf
A Forest on the Sea - Timber, Empire and the Venetian Republic
Christof Mauch, The Growth of Trees: A Historical Perspective on Sustainability, München: oekom Verlag, 2014, Ch 1 and 3, (2 and 4 optional).
https://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/download/press/rcc-news/140805_mauch.pdf
Karl R. Appuhn. A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010, 1-19.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DCzPFmlCp7fGVG7i54Bc97m12i2ArNN-/view

Week 7
Seeing like a State and seeing for yourself
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven/ London: Yale University Press, 1998, 1-22.
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvxkn7ds

Jenny Price, “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in Los Angeles,” in Believer Magazine 33 (2006): 3-13.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/emma-assets/u7qbb/545e285b254b8fc163f4c55e67e4049b/Believer-JPrice-full.pdf

Assignment: Identify six ways of looking at Venice?
Field trips to Torcello and La Certosa [need to be scheduled]

Week 8
Drinking Water in a Saltwater Sea
David Gentilcore, “The cistern-system of early modern Venice: technology, politics and culture in a hydraulic society”, in Water History (2021): 375-406.
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/key_docs/s12685-021-00288-2.pdf

Assignment: Finding water in Venice

Week 9
A Polluted World - a Polluted Lagoon
Christof Mauch, “Rachel Carson: Silent Spring”, in Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde (eds.), The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change, New Haven: Yale University Press 2013, 195-203.
https://doi.org/10.12987/9780300188479
Serenella Iovino, Ecocriticism in Italy, London/ New York: Bloomsbury, 2016, 47-82 [Chapter “Cognitive Justice and the Truth of Biology: Death (and Life) in Venice].
Marianna Tsionki, “Porto Maghera”, in Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio De Capitani and Pietro D. Omodeo (eds.), Venice and the Anthropocene, Venice: Wetlands, 2022, 135-138.
Elena Longhin, “Barene and Petrochemicals”, in Cristina Baldacci, Shaul Bassi, Lucio De Capitani and Pietro D. Omodeo (eds.), Venice and the Anthropocene, Venice: Wetlands, 2022, 51-54.

Week 10
Extinction - Endangered species and an Endangered City
Ursula K. Heise, “Lost Dogs, Last Birds, and Listed Species: Elegy and Comedy in Conservation Stories”, in Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017, 19-54.
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/en9b5worldlitanthropocene/ursula-k-heise-imagining-extinction-the-cultural-meanings-of-endangered-species.pdf
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, New York: Picador, 2014, 4-22.
Tammana Begum, “What is mass extinction and are we facing a sixth one?”, in: Natural History Museum London, 19 May 2021 (updated 21 February 2023)
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/what-is-mass-extinction-and-are-we-facing-a-sixth-one.html

Week 11
Climate Change and Environmental Justice
Alba Rossella, Silja Klepp, and Antje Bruns, “Environmental justice and the politics of climate change adaptation: – the case of Venice”, in Geographica Helvetica 75 (2020): 363-368.
https://gh.copernicus.org/articles/75/363/2020/
Ilan Kelman, “Does Flooding define the Aquapelago? Constructing Venice’s flood disaster risk personality”, in Shima 15 (2021): 80-93.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/4fb6/57277b32d691b424ed923baec7ee660cbf9d.pdf,

Week 12
Hope or nope? “Venice is not sinking - ha!”
Christof Mauch, Slow Hope: Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear, München: Rachel Carson Center, 2019.
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/2019_i1_web.pdf
Neal E. Robins, “Venice: A Future for a Dying City”, in Oxford Urbanist, December 22, 2021,
https://www.oxfordurbanists.com/magazine/2021/12/22/venice-a-future-for-a-dying-city

Assignment: What would you save?

Further Reading
I am planning to provide students with readings (20-50 pages obligatory per week). The texts in the bibliography below can help with further reading.

Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016, 137-151.
Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.

Whitney J. Autin, and John M. Holbrook, “Is the Anthropocene an Issue of Stratigraphy or Pop Culture?”, in GSA Today 22 no.7 (2012): 60-61. doi: 10.1130/G153GW.1.

A. D. Barnovsky, and E. Hadley, Tipping Point for Planet Earth: How Close are we to the Edge?, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2016.

Aldino Bondesan, “Geomorphological Processes and Landscape Evolution of the Lagoon of Venice”, in Mauro Soldati and Mauro Marchetti (eds.), Landscapes and Landforms of Italy, Cham: Springer, 2017.

Kate Brown, “The Wardian Case”, in Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review
https://www.environmentandsociety.org/mml/world-wardian-case

Robert Emmett and Thomas Lekan, eds., “Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s ‘Four Theses’”, in RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society 2 (2016). doi.org/10.5282/rcc/742

Donna Harraway, “Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene”, e-flux journal, no. 75 (September 2016).
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67125/tentacular-thinking-anthropocene-capitalocene-chthulucene/
Ursula Heise, Imagining Extinction: The Cultural Meaning of Threatened Species, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Mike Hulme, “The Challenges of Development” in Why we disagree about Climate Change, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

E. Kohn, How Forests Think: A Cultural Anthropology beyond the Human, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.

Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2014.

Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, “Anthropocene Blues: Abundance, Energy, Limits”, in Frederike Felcht and Katie Ritson (eds.), The Imagination of Limits: Exploring Scarcity and Abundance, München: RCC Perspectives, 2015, 55–63.

Bruno Latour, “Anthropology at the Time of the Anthropocene”, in M. Brightman and J. Lewis (eds.), The Anthropology of Sustainability, London: Palgrave, 2017, 35-51.

Marc Levinson, “The World the Box Made,” in The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, 1-15.
Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, “Defining the Anthropocene”, in Nature 519, (2015): 171–80. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258

Andreas Malm and Alf Hornborg, “The Geology of Mankind? A Critique of the Anthropocene Narrative,” in The Anthropocene Review 1, no.1 (2014): 62-9. https://doi.org/10.1177/20530196135162

Andreas Malm, “’To Halt Climate Change, We Need an Ecological Leninism’ – An Interview with Andreas Malm,” Jacobin Magazine, June 2020.
https://jacobin.com/2020/06/andreas-malm-coronavirus-covid-climate-change

Kyla Mandel, “This Woman Fundamentally Changed Climate Science – and You’ve Probably Never Heard of Her,” ThinkProgress.org, published May 18, 2018, https://archive.thinkprogress.org/female-climate-scientist-eunice-foote-finally-honored-for-her-contributions-162-years-later-21b3cf08c70b/

Christof Mauch, Slow Hope: Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear, Munich: RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, 2019.

John McNeill and P. Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.
William Ruddiman, “The Early Anthropogenic Hypothesis: Challenges and Responses.” Reviews of Geophysics 45, no. 4 (2007).
https://doi.org/10.1029/2006RG000207
Jeffrey D, Sachs, “Introduction to Sustainable Development” and “Planetary Boundaries,” in The Age of Sustainable Development, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015, 1-44 and 181-218.
Vaclav Smil, “Nitrogen Cycle and World Food Production,” in World Agriculture 2 (2011): 9-13.

Julia Adeney Thomas and Jan Zalasiewicz, “Strata and Three Stories,” RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, no. 3 (2020).
doi.org/10.5282/rcc/9205

Helmuth Trischler (ed.), “Anthropocene: Exploring the Future of the Age of Humans,” in RCC Perspectives, no 3. (2013).
2013doi.org/10.5282/rcc/5603

Richard W. Unger (ed.), “Energy Transitions in History: Global Cases of Continuity and Change,” in RCC Perspectives, no 2. (2013).
doi.org/10.5282/rcc/5602

David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2019.

Spencer Weart, “How Could Climate Change?” and “Discovering a Possibility,” in The Discovery of Global Warming, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, 1-38 and 209-10.

Tony Weis, The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock, London: Zed Books, 2013.

Donald Worster, Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of Natural Abundance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Last updated: January 10, 2025